Jon Brett

Jon Brett, who has died suddenly of a heart attack aged 40, contributed to the understanding and conservation of the archaeology and historic buildings of Bristol.

He was educated at Newport Free grammar school, in Essex, and at the University of Warwick, where he studied Renaissance and modern history. More recently, he gained a master's degree in geographical information systems and environment at Manchester Metropolitan University.

In Bristol since 1989, he had been the city's assistant archaeologist since 1997, and made a major contribution in constructing the Bristol urban archaeological database, a source of information about the city's history and archaeology. His lasting legacy will be the assessment of Bristol's archaeology, of which he was the principal author and which is now on its way to publication.

Jon was always ready to help on a range of projects and initiatives, including the Bristol Legible City programme and the exhibition Thinking of the Outside, where the historic centre of Bristol was transformed into a huge art gallery. Jon was one of the prime instigators behind the project, in which a number of leading artists came together to use the medieval defences of the city to re-examine present attitudes and the concept of boundaries.

His death will be a special loss to the world of historical or post-medieval archaeology. Jon's support for the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology's conference on colonial landscapes, held on Nevis in the eastern Caribbean in 2005, followed his own archaeological research on Nevis and St Kitts with a team from the University of Southampton and National Museums Liverpool. But for his early death, he might have become involved in constructing archaeological databases to protect the archaeology and built heritage of these two islands.

Jon was an entertaining companion with a very positive approach to life. A kind and gentle man, he will be missed for his patience, good humour, and willingness to impart his great knowledge.

He is survived by his parents, Ron and Ruth Brett, and a younger brother, Jeremy.